We NEED your support. More specifically, the author of this article needs your support. If you've been enjoying our content, you know that a lot of work goes into our stories and although it may be a work of passion, writers gotta eat. If just half our readers gave 1 DOLLAR a month, one measly dollar, we could fund all the work from StuChiu, DeKay, Emily, Andrew (and even Vince). If you contribute 5 DOLLARS a month, we invite you to join our Discord and hang with the team. We wouldn't bother you like this if we didn't need your help and you can feel good knowing that 100% of your donation goes to the writers. We'd really appreciate your support. After all, you're what makes all this happen. Learn more

Q&A: Esports attorney Bryce Blum on ethics, player contracts and the need

Slingshot contributor Amanda “SageGnosis” Stevens talked to esports attorney Bryce Blum about a wide range of topics. Here are a few highlights (with full audio also available):

Bryce Blum (provided photo)

AS (4:55): Are there a lot of you? Are there a lot of people out there who specify in (esports law)?

BB: There aren’t a lot of us. It’s certainly a growing club, and I’m sure it will continue to grow because I get emails at the rate of 1+ a day from young lawyers or law students or college students or whoever with an interested in the field. So I was the first to market esports attorney. I started practicing at a large, Seattle law firm. Pretty much from Day 1 on the job started doing some writing forecasting the legal future of esports.

AS (25:36): Do you know how much of the players summit is focused on this aspect? How to make sure you have a fair contract…or is that sort of left up to a player being aware enough to contact an attorney?

BB: Obviously, I’m aware of the players summit. I’ve never attended it. I know a lot of players who have, and I’ve talked to them about it sort of in broad strokes…I know these types of issues do come up, but I also know it’s somewhat a sticky situation. Riot does want the best for the players, but they also don’t want to inject themselves between the player/team relationship, and they’re very hesitant to overstep and potentially expose themselves to liability or sacrifice some of their own interests.

Full timestamp:

0:00: Intro
0:45: Origin as a Gamer
3:06: Origin as a Lawyer
4:50: Being an eSports Attorney
17:50: Ethics of being THE eSports Attorney
19:00: A short discussion on contracts
25:15: A long discussion on the need for there to be an independent player symposium
42:00: Twitter Question – Why are teams so bad at social media?
44:20: General Chit Chat
49:41: Outro